An overarching goal of my dissertation is to delineate social systemic processes as first and foremost embodied, experiential processes. I argue that such processes manifest through and depend upon the organism’s affective integration with her environment. Whereby, I delineate concepts like alienation and agency as manifesting through an affective intelligibility. Symbolic alienation, then, represents a circumstance in which institutional narratives purport moral or aesthetic truths that denigrate and deny the organism’s affective understanding of a circumstance. Agentic growth refers to the organism’s affective adaptation to an environment. Such growth follows from the process of working through experiential discordance (i.e., the disturbance of experiential flow or continuity) and manifests as a new-found sense of trust and understanding. Experiential discordance is an unavoidable occurrence because the organism-environment relationship is a dynamic one. If the organism is unable to mitigate and repair such discordance, she will face the threat of traumatization. Furthermore, those who disrupt the conventional-institutional organization or channeling of experience take on the character of dirt and thereby represent a dirty Other. If institutions react to the troubling, dirty Other by means of systemic repression, rather than genuine communication and reintegration, then said dirty Other takes on the character of shit. In such a circumstance, the presence of the dirty Other likely reveals deep, social systemic inadequacies and thereby ruptures the collective’s existential confidence and praxeological competence.

This thesis explores how to effectively model trust in the environment of mobile vehicular ad-hoc networks. We consider each vehicle’s travel path planning to be guided by an intelligent agent that receives traffic reports from other agents in the environment. Determining the trustworthiness of these reports is thus a critical task. We take as a starting point the multi-dimensional trust model of Minhas et al. That work had a two-phased approach: i) model trust and ii) execute an algorithm for using that trust modeling, when deciding what route to take. The framework presented in this thesis aims to clarify i) the messaging that should be supported, ii) the internal representation of the messaging and the trust information and iii) the algorithms for sending and receiving information (thus updating knowledge) in order to perform decision making during route planning. A significant contribution is therefore offered through clarification and extension of the original trust modeling approach. In addition we design a comprehensive, extensive simulation testbed that is used to validate the effectiveness and robustness of the model. This testbed supports a variety of metrics and is able to perform testing in environments with a large number of cars. This constitutes the second significant contribution of the thesis. Overall, we present a valuable model for knowledge management in mobile vehicular ad-hoc networks through a combination of trust modeling, ontological representation of concepts and facts, and a methodology for discovering and updating user models. Included is a representation and implementation of both a push-based and pull-based messaging protocol. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of this model through validation conducted using our simulation testbed, focusing first on a subset of the multi-faceted trust model in order to highlight the value of the underlying representation, decision making algorithm and simulation metrics. One very valuable result is a demonstration of the importance of the combined use of the different dimensions employed in the trust modeling.

In the field of multiagent systems, trust and reputation systems are intended to assist agents in finding trustworthy partners with whom to interact. Earlier work of ours identified in theory a number of security vulnerabilities in trust and reputation systems, weaknesses that might be exploited by malicious agents to bypass the protections offered by such systems. In this work, we begin by developing the TREET testbed, a simulation platform that allows for extensive evaluation and flexible experimentation with trust and reputation technologies. We use this testbed to experimentally validate the practicality and gravity of attacks against vulnerabilities. Of particular interest are attacks that are collusive in nature: groups of agents (coalitions) working together to improve their expected rewards. But the issue of coalitions is not unique to trust and reputation; rather, it cuts across a range of fields in multiagent systems and beyond. In some scenarios, coalitions may be unwanted or forbidden; in others they may be benign or even desirable. In this document, we propose a method for detecting coalitions and identifying coalition members, a capability that is likely to be valuable in many of the diverse fields where coalitions may be of interest. Our method makes use of clustering in benefit space (a high-dimensional space reflecting how agents benefit others in the system) in order to identify groups of agents who benefit similar sets of agents. A statistical technique is then used to identify which clusters contain coalitions. Experimentation using the TREET platform verifies the effectiveness of this approach. A series of enhancements to our method are also introduced, which improve the accuracy and robustness of the algorithm. To demonstrate how this broadly-applicable tool can be used to address domain-specific problems, we focus again on trust and reputation systems. We show how, by incorporating our work into one such system (the existing Beta Reputation System), we can provide resistance to collusion. We conclude with a detailed discussion of the value of our work for a wide range of environments, including a variety of multiagent systems and real-world settings.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

Encryption is increasingly being used as deterrence for software piracy and vulnerability exploitation. Unencrypted or insecure programs can be the subject of intensive scrutiny by attackers in an attempt to disable protective features or to find buffer overflows as an avenue of attack of other systems. The application of encrypted programs, however, leads to other security concerns as users are no longer able to distinguish between malicious and benign behavior due to the secretive nature of encryption. Furthermore, should an attacker gain access to the software update process then malicious updates or modifications can be made to the system without the knowledge of the users. Therefore, system administrators running encrypted software now have a need for techniques that would allow such encrypted software to execute properly while minimizing the possibility of the system being compromised. The goal of this research is to develop a methodology that can enable users to trust encrypted software to allow their execution.

This dissertation addresses research questions related to defining user's trust and risk perceptions associated with social networking usage behavior in relation to the repeated privacy and security breaches. The general research question is explored in the dissertation via the conduct of three related studies. The finding from these three investigations are presented in the results section as 3 essays that collectively examine the social networking sites usage behavior. Essay 1 proposes a conceptual model based on the review of multiple breaches. The review provides a conceptual model which is further analyzed using a quantitative survey in the second essay. Essay 2 measures the trust and risk perceptions associated with different sources of information when presented with multiple breaches. This portion of the research used a quantitative method that included surveying of college students from University of North Texas (UNT) to understand the relation between user's trust and risk perceptions. Essay 3 examines the social networking usage behavior on account of repeated privacy and security breaches. This essay uses the insights from the other two essays to identify the usage behavior and how it is affected. The proposed model was tested using a survey questionnaire method. Results show a significant relationship between the positives, negatives, technology usage, repeated breaches that impacts usage behavior. The dissertation concludes with a summary of how the three essays make a cumulative contribution to the literature as well as providing practical guidance that identifies social networking usage behavior.

This study explores teenager perceptions towards advertising in the online social networking environment. The future of online social networking sites is dependant upon the continued support of advertisers in this new medium, which is linked to the acceptance of advertising on these sites by their targeted audience. This exploratory study used the qualitative research methods of focus groups and in-depth personal interviews to gain insights from the teenager participants. The literature review in Chapter Two examined the previous research into advertising theories, consumer attitudes and issues such as advertising avoidance, advertising as a service and trust and privacy in the online social networking environment. The teenage consumer was also examined as were the influences of social identity theory. From this literature review eleven propositions were formed which provided a structure to the analysis of the research. Chapter Three outlined the multi-method research approach of using focus groups and in-depth interviews. The key findings were outlined in Chapter Four and Chapter Five provides discussion regarding these findings and the implications for theory and advertising practice. The main findings from this study suggest that teenagers have very high levels of advertising avoidance and are sceptical towards advertising on their online social networking sites. They have an inherent distrust of commercial messages in the online social networking environment; however they are extremely trusting with the information that they disclose online. They believe that if their site is classified as private, then the information disclosed on this site is not accessible to anyone. The study explores the reasons behind these views. This research has resulted in the identification of seven motivations behind online social networking use. A new model of advertising avoidance in the online social networking environment is also presented and discussed. This model makes a contribution towards filling the gap in available research on online social networking sites and advertising perception. The findings of this study have also resulted in the identification of the characteristics of online social networking sites as an advertising medium. The newness of online social networking sites coupled with the enthusiastic adoption of online social networking by the teenage demographic means that this exploratory study will be of interest to both academics and practitioners alike.

Thesis (MAppSci in Project Management) --University of South Australia, 1994

[Abstract]The beef cattle industry is one of Australia’s major agricultural industries and a significant contributor to the nation’s economy. This research focused on the beef cattle industry in Queensland mainly because it is the nation’s largest supplier of beef products (Department of Primary Industries & Fisheries 2006c). The Queensland beefcattle supply chain can be described as a system of organizations or people (i.e. cattle producers, beef processors, etc.) involved in the movement of beef products from the source (i.e. farm, abattoirs, etc) to the end consumers. The need for an ever more efficient supply chain in today’s marketplace highlights the importance of stakeholders’ perceptions on collaboration, which is directly influenced by trust and technologydiffusion. As with any industry, the management of the beef cattle industry comprises of several stakeholder groups, with each having its own set of expectations ofperformance. As such, there is a benefit in studying the factors affecting trust and technology diffusion within the beef cattle supply chain from the viewpoint of thestakeholder groups.In addition to identifying the case study subjects located within the state of Queensland, this research also included stakeholders from Singapore. Studies were undertaken in Singapore because: (a) a study of world beef trends by Chudleigh (2003) highlighted that world beef export growth is no longer confined only to high value markets such as Japan and Korea, instead, the consumption rate in developing countries are on the rise and; (b) as the researcher is from Singapore, it was far more convenient and easier to reach case subjects in Singapore as compared to undertaking a study in the high valuemarkets.This study used Importance-Performance Measurement technique within the theoretical framework. The analysis was used to measure the alignment of a factor or characteristic from the stakeholders’ viewpoint. Information on factor alignment allows for thedevelopment of a strategy process to help balance the challenges associated with the differences between importance and performance for factors affecting trust andtechnology diffusion. Thus, the research question being addressed in this dissertation was: What is the magnitude of the performance gaps of critical factors affecting thelevel of trust and technology diffusion within the Queensland beef cattle supply chain?A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, to incorporate case studies and survey questionnaire, was used in this study. As an initial stage, a comprehensive literature review on stakeholder theory, trust theory and DOI theory was performed. The second stage involved qualitative research using multiple case studies. The final stage involved the analysis of data collected. Independent-samples t-tests andpaired-samples t-tests were undertaken to assess the importance and performance rating of trust and technology diffusion.This research has shown that a gap exists between the levels of trust, as well as the degrees of technology diffusion within the beef cattle supply chain – there is asignificant difference between the importance and performance rating of both trust and technology diffusion by all three categories i.e. stakeholder groups, stakeholder locations and stakeholder countries. Within each category, the individual groups also noted significant differences between their importance and performance rating of trust and technology diffusion factors. In addition, the research identified there is asignificant difference in the importance and performance rating of quality by the stakeholders from Singapore. Such critical performance gaps (in reference to trust andtechnology) directly influences information flow along the chain, affecting information sharing, and ultimately reducing the level of trust.Further studies extending across Australia can provide a more in-depth understanding and useful insight into the Australian beef cattle culture and also allow for themeasurement and comparison of differing performance gaps of trust and technology diffusion across the various states in Australia. Additionally, as this research onlyincluded participants from Queensland and Singapore, further exploration to include countries not examined in this study can be highly beneficial. Comparison can be madebetween an assortment of countries to address if the factors previously identified with critical gaps are the same or different across countries. This research can also be extended to focus on the size of organization, which contributes significantly to the current knowledge and academic literature on the Australian beef cattle supply chain.